EM 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2010 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/bunkerhillmonumeOOwint 




lunkr Hill Ponumtnt ^ssotiatinn. 



MR. WINTHROFS ADDRESS 



AT 



THE ANNUAL MEETING, 



i8 June, 1883. 



Fifty Copies, privately printed from the '"''Proceedings^' 



--'^''\ 
V^"^ 



ADDRESS 



OF 



HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 



ADDRESS. 



Gentlemen of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, — 

Sixty years have now been completed since tliis 
Association was incorporated. Our Charter bears date 
June 7, 1823. Forty-eight years had then ah^eady 
elapsed since the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought ; 
and we thus meet to-day in commemoration of the one 
hundred and eighth anniversary of that ever memora- 
ble conflict. 

Our meeting, however, is primarily, if not altogether, 
a business meeting, for the election of officers, and for 
hearing the annual reports of our treasurer and our 
directors. You will not, therefore, I am sure, expect 
from me anything in the nature of a formal address. 

Yet I might seem wanting to such an occasion, if not 
to you and to myself, were I not to follow the uniform 
example of those who have preceded me in this chair, 
and to offer you, in a few off-hand remarks, my cordial 
greeting on the return of so hallowed an anniversary, 
and my warm congratulations on the continued pros- 
perity and success of the objects for which this Associa- 
tion was organized. 

It was, indeed, originally proposed, and was even 
made the subject of a solemn resolution at our Annual 
Meeting in 1824, that there should be " an Address 



4 ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT C. WIN'THROP. 

annnally delivered before the Association on the 17th 
of June, to commemorate the Battle of Bunker Hill." 
But it is plain that this resolution did not contemplate 
your President as the perpetual orator of the day, since 
it expressly provided also, that " a citizen should be 
chosen at each Annual Meeting to make such address 
at the next Annual Meeting." 

I am not aware that this old, original Resolution has 
ever been regularly rescinded, but we all know that it 
has been allowed to lapse into disuse by common 
consent ; and we have all been more than content with 
occasional addresses, in particular years, and in view 
of special circumstances, — such as the completion of 
the Monument ; the seventy-fifth, and, more especially, 
the one-hundredth anniversary of the battle ; the un- 
veiling of the marble statue of General Joseph Warren, 
and, more recently, of the admirable bronze statue of 
Colonel William Prescott. 

At all events, Gentlemen, no citizen was chosen at 
the last Annual Meeting to deliver an Address at this 
meeting ; and no rightful expectations can thus be dis- 
appointed if we confine ourselves mainly, this morning, 
to the quiet transaction of the business which may 
come before us. Other exceptional occasions will pre- 
sent themselves from time to time, in future years as 
they have done in years past, when we or our succes- 
sors will be seen eagerly assembling again on yonder 
famous heights, and when eloquent voices will be 
heard telling again the never-tiring story of the first 
great battle of the American Revolution. Another 
quarter of a century from its date will soon have 
elapsed. Another half-century anniversary will not 



ADDEESS OF HON. EGBERT C. WINTHEOP. 

be slow in rolling on. And far later still, but not less 
surely, a grand Second Centennial of Bunker Hill will 
stir the blood of millions yet unborn, and be celebrated 
not here only, but throughout the length and breadth 
of what we hope and trust and believe will still, by 
the blessing of God, be a free, prosperous, united, and 
glorious country. What orator will be adequate to 
that occasion ! What lips, what language, will be com- 
mensurate to the theme which that day will present to 
the contemplation of the world, if we and those who 
come after us shall only be true to ourselves, to our 
country, and to our God, — seeing and pursuing those 
things Avhich belong unto our peace, before they are 
hidden from our eyes ! 

Meantime, other well-deserved statues will be found 
leaping from the quarries or the foundries, at the magic 
touch of accomplished artists like Story and Greenough 
and Ball, to take their places at the side of Warren or 
of Prescott; and a substantial and spacious Gnmite 
Lodge for the safe-keeping and exhibition of the relics 
of the Battle, and of the memorials of those by whom it 
was fought, and of those by whom it has been worthily 
illustrated, — in which, perhaps, these Annual Meetings 
may thereafter be held, — will be seen, it is hoped, 
at no distant day, offering itself for dedication. That 
is the first necessity of our condition. It would be a 
noble work for some public benefactor to provide for, 
and make his own, in default of our inadequate re- 
sources. But contributions for such a purpose can 
hardly fail to be forthcoming whenever called for, and 
I cannot but hope that another Annual Meeting will 
not occur without plans and estimates having been 



6 ADDRESS OF HON. IlOBERT C. WINTHROP. 

obtained, and the serious consideration of the work at 
least fjxirly entered upon. In these and other similar 
occurrences, ample, if not annual, opportimities will be 
found for keeping alive the memory of the 17th of 
June, 1775, should that memory ever again seem to be 
in danger, as it did sixty years ago, of losing its right- 
ful hold on the American heart. 

But it never again will be in any such danger. The 
events and associations of that day have been already 
embalmed in as noble and as imperishable eloquence as 
our own country or any other country on earth has ever 
produced. They have certainly inspired more than one 
oration, never surpassed in the whole compass of English 
literature. History and biography, too, have dealt with 
them elaborately and brilliantly. And yonder massive 
and stately Monument, which was the original design 
and work of this Association, and is still and ever its 
most sacred trust, — albeit unadorned by anything of 
advanced art, and perhaps all the more on that account, 
— will stand proof against oblivion and against the 
elements, braving the Avinds and storms and even time 
itself, and telling the tale of Prescott and Warren and 
Putnam and their gallant comrades, century after cen- 
tury, for a thousand years. Thither the Tribes will go 
up in all time to come. Troops and throngs of our chil- 
dren and our children's children, through countless 
generations, will be seen gathering on that conse- 
crated Hill, on some of those special occasions as they 
succeed each other in the near or in the distant future, 
gazing with delight, as they advance, at that lifelike 
statue of the heroic Commander of the day, — who 
seems to have returned and retaken the redoubt, as he 



ADDRESS OF HON. EOBERT C. WINTHROP. 7 

said he could, — and recalling, as they go on and 
stand face to flxce with that colossal shaft, those 
thrilling words of Webster : " The powerful speaker 
stands motionless before us. Its future auditories will 
be the successive generations of men, as they rise up 
before it and gather around it. Its speech will be of 
patriotism and courage ; of civil and religious liberty ; 
of free government ; of the moral improvement and 
elevation of mankind ; and of the immortal memory of 
those who, with heroic devotion, have sacrificed their 
lives for their country ! " 

The battle of Bunker Hill, for itself and on its own 
account, will need no more orations, no other orator. 
Its commemorations and celebrations will always serve 
to make a welcome holiday ; and they may always be 
relied upon, in any hour of peril, to rouse the slumber- 
ing patriotism of the people, and to rekindle the watch- 
fires of liberty. But its own remembrance w^ill rest 
safely forever on the massive Obelisk which this Asso- 
ciation has erected, and on the matchless utterances to 
which that Obelisk has more than once given the 
occasion and the inspiration. 

Let me not fail to add. Gentlemen, that, for the 
present year, there is a peculiar fitness in our omitting 
any special celebration of this or of any other battle. 
We have just gone through with tbe hundredth anni- 
versaries of tlie battles of the Revolution, from Bunker 
Hill to York town. We have exhausted the whole 
series. There are no more centennials of war to be 
celebrated. The grander Centennial of Peace has at 
length arrived, and is now in order. The struggle for 
American Independence, begun here in Massachusetts 



b ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 

in 1775, came to a triumphant end just a hundred 
years ago; and the year 1783 stands out on the calen- 
dar of American history, illuminated from month to 
month, and almost from day to day, from its opening 
to its close, with all that can awaken the gratitude and 
rejoice the hearts of Christian patriots. 

On the 20th of January of that year the preliminary 
Treaty of Peace and Independence, which had been 
signed provisionally on the previous 30th of November, 
took full effect. On the 13th of February the King's 
Speech, announcing that treaty to the Parliament of 
Great Britain, arrived in America, and filled every 
bosom with joy. Early in March the official copy of 
that Preliminary Treaty was welcomed by Congress. 
Meantime our Army at Newburgh, which had grown 
somewhat impatient and restless under long and man- 
ifold deprivations and hardships, gave occasion to that 
memorable scene, on the 15th of March, when Wash- 
ington recalled them to a sense of patriotic submission 
and duty by as impressive and touching an appeal as 
ever fell from human lips. On the 11th of April Con- 
gress ordered a cessation of liostilities, which Washing- 
ton proclaimed to the Army on the 19th, a day, as he 
said in that proclamation, — referring to Lexington and 
Concord, — which completed the eighth year of the war. 
Then followed, early in June, the noble circular letter 
of Washington to the governors of all the States, — a 
legacy hardly second in interest, ability, and importance 
to his Farewell Address to the Nation, on withdrawing 
from the Presidency, thirteen years afterwards. The 
order of the Cincinnati now springs into existence, at 
the headquarters of the brave old Baron Steuben, — 



ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 9 

known since as the Verplanck Manor, near Fishkill, — 
to be the subject of suspicion, controversy, and even 
calumny for a few years, but to outlive them all, and 
to remain to this day as an honorable historical memorial 
of the gallant officers who led the Army of Independ- 
ence. During all this time the Definitive Treaty of 
Peace and Independence is making steady progress 
in Paris, and on the 3d day of September, at the British 
Minister's apartments in the Hotel de York, that im- 
mortal treaty is finally signed by John Adams, Ben- 
jamin Franklin, John Jay, and the Minister of Great 
Britain, David Hartley. Accordingly, on the 18th of 
October, Congress issues a Proclamation for the Army 
of the Revolution to be disbanded on the od of Novem- 
ber ; and on the 2d, the day before, Washington pro- 
mulgates his farewell orders to the soldiers with whom 
he has so long been associated. On the 25th of 
November the British Army evacuates New York. In 
that once more open city, on the 4th of December, at 
Fraunce's Tavern, Washington takes that affectionate 
and affecting leave of his brothers in arms, and they all 
of him. And then, at last, on the 23d of December, is 
witnessed, at Annapolis, the sublime closing scene of 
the American Revolution, — to which history presents 
no parallel, — when our consummate and incomparable 
Patriot and Hero resigns his commission as Commander- 
in-Chief of our Armies, and gives back the sword which 
had achieved our Independence to the Congress from 
which he had received it in 1775. 

Such is the succession of events which throw a halo 
of glory around that blessed year of our Lord of which 
this year, 1883, is the Centennial, encircling and gild- 
ing it, almost from its dawn to the very last week of its 



10 ADDEESS OF HON. EOBERT C. WINTHEOP. 

close, with a radiance all its own, without a tinge of 
the crimson stains of carnage or conflict ! 

Such a year will fitly find its Centennial Commem- 
oration in the national observances which have been 
arranged, I believe, for the 3d of September at New- 
burgh, the final headquarters of the American Army ; 
and, not less fitly, in the grand Exposition to be opened 
on the same day in our own city, where the Revolution 
began. We may well postpone Bunker Hill, and all 
other battles, to other years, and lend all our aid and 
support and sympathy to this Boston Exposition, which 
not a few of our own number have united in organiz- 
ing, under the auspices of the Massachusetts Charitable 
Mechanic Association, and to which tiie leading nations 
of the world are at this moment preparing to contribute 
the choicest products of their art and industry. 

Let me hasten now to pass from these general re- 
marks to matters of more direct and practical interest. 

It became my duty and privilege, while I was in 
Europe last summer, to communicate officially to the 
Marquis de Rochambeau and to M. Edmond de Lafa- 
yette the notice of their election, at your last Annual 
Meeting, as honorary members of this Association. I 
hold in my hands their several letters of acknowledg- 
ment and acceptance. 

The Marquis de Rochambeau writes, from his old 
ancestral Chateau de Rochambeau, near A^endome, 
where, before my return home, I had the pleasure of 
passing some delightful days with him and his family, 
and of seeing the fine portrait of the gallant commander 
of our French allies at Yorktown, and many other most 
interesting memorials and relics of his brilliant military 



ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 11 

career. The letter is dcated August 9, 1882, and in it 
he says : " I was greatly flattered by the distinction 
conferred upon me by the Bunker Hill Monument 
Association in naming me one of its honorary members. 
I shall always remember our visit to this famous Monu- 
ment in your beautiful city of Boston, and the sympa- 
thetic welcome which you gave us there. 

" The laurels which the Americans gathered in 1775 
were the most precious for your fathers, as the pledges 
of hope which God sent them from HeaVen. At a later 
day the Sovereign Dispenser of Victory appeared mani- 
festly in their behalf, and the Sun of Liberty began to 
break away from the clouds, and to shine upon the 
States of the Union." 

The letter of M. Edmond de Lafayette, bearing the 
same date but written from his residence in Paris, is as 
follows : — 

Mr. President : Will you excuse me for having so long 
delayed to answer you ? But I have been engrossed by 
my political duties and by the sessions of the Senate. I am 
deeply touched by the news you have announced. I cannot 
but be honored and flattered to be named an Honorary 
Member of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, — to 
succeed my brother Oscar, — and to see the name of Lafayette 
figuring still among so many well-known names which I have 
learned to love and respect, and which recall the glorious 
epoch of the first struggles for Independence in your 
country. 

It is with lively emotion that I accept the Diploma 
which you kindly offer me. I pray you to receive the 
expression of my thanks, and to communicate to your 
colleagues my sentiments of profound gratitude. 

Accept the assurance of my distinguished consideration. 

Edmond de Lafayette, 

Senator of the Haute Loire. 

MonS. ROBKKT C. WiNTHKOl'. 



12 ADDKESS OF HON. ROBEET C. WINTHROP. 

Acceptances were also received from Major-General 
Winfield Scott Hancock of the United States Army, and 
from General Joseph Hawley, United States Senator of 
Connecticut, which will be duly preserved on our files. 

Our last Annual Report, as you will all remember, 
included an account of the reception of all the French 
guests at Bunker Hill on the 2d of November, 1881, on 
their return from the great centennial celebration at 
Yorktown. I took pleasure in transmitting a copy of 
this report to each one of the guests, with the litho- 
graphic fac-similes of their autograph signatures on 
our visitors' book, and I received from them all the 
most cordial expressions of acknowledgment. Not a 
few of them called on me personally in Paris, and were 
full of grateful recollections of Yorktown and Bunker 
Hill. 

And now. Gentlemen, we are called on to remember, 
at this anniversary meeting, those of our Directors who 
have died during the past year. Indeed, we could not 
forget them if we would. Though happily there are 
but two names lost to our livino; roll since it was last 
made up, yet those two, I need hardly remind you, are 
the names of men who had not only rendered devoted 
services to our Association, but who had in everj^ way 
entitled themselves to our warm regard and respect. 

The Hon. Otis Norcross died on the 5th of Septem- 
ber, in the seventy-first year of his age. He had been 
one of our Directors for fifteen years, during six of 
which he was a member of the Standing Committee. No 
one of the Board v/as more attentive, more vigilant, or 
more practically useful. He brought to our service the 



ADDEESS OF HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 13 

sterling qualities which marked his whole character and 
career. He was a man of great intelligence, of remark- 
able firmness, and of the highest integrity, never weary 
in well-doing, and one whose counsel and co-opera- 
tion, in all the concerns not only of this Association but 
of the community in which he lived, were as highly val- 
ued as they were cheerfully and generously afforded. I 
knew him intimately in the days of the Civil War, when 
I was engaged, as chairman of the Overseers of the Poor, 
in the reorganization of that Board, of which he was the 
Treasurer ; and I can thus bear personal testimony to 
his wisdom, his diligence, and his unswerving fidelity. 
But this was only one of the relations which he sustained 
for so many years to the charitable Institutions of our 
city. He was indeed more or less prominently associa- 
ted with almost all of them. Meantime, as Chairman of 
the Board of Aldermen, as Mayor of Boston for at least 
one year, and as a member of the Executive Council of 
the State, his name was honorably associated with 
important political offices and affairs, and it will not 
soon be forgotten as that of an honest man, a valuable 
citizen, and a good and faithful public servant. 

Of the Hon. George Washington Warren, who 
died in this city on the 13th day of May last, in the 
seventieth year of his age, the records of our Associa- 
tion will preserve a distinguished memory, as long as 
the Association itself shall continue to exist. Its Secre- 
tary for eight years, from 1839 to 1847, — its President 
for twenty-eight years, from 1847 to 1875, — his ser- 
vices in various capacities, and as one of our Directors 
from 1836, cover a period of forty-seven years. His An- 



14 ADDRESS OF HON^. EGBERT C. WINTHROP. 

nnal Addresses, as President, which have always been 
included in the printed proceedings of the Association, 
contain the details of all the important or interesting 
occurrences connected with the Monument from year to 
year, together with appropriate notices of our deceased 
officers and members, and with many more general 
historical references to the conflict which the Monu- 
ment commemorates. But he had evidently contem- 
plated, during the whole period, the more substantial 
effort with which his name will be always identified, and 
in 1877 he produced and published an elaborate History 
of the Association and of its work, as the crowning labor 
of his long and zealous services in its behalf. 

Born, as he tells us in the preface to that stately 
volume, at the foot of Bunker Hill, where he resided 
for a large part of his life, and having received from his 
father, as a boy of only eleven years old, one of the 
engraved diplomas of membership of that day, — "in 
a gilt frame," as he is careful to mention, — he seems 
to have imbibed at once a passionate enthusiasm for 
everything relating to the Battle, to the Monument, 
and to all their associations and surroundings, and 
to have gathered and treasured up with unwearied 
assiduity whatever might possibly contribute to their 
illustration. Little or nothing of importance, certainly, 
in regard to the men who projected and built the 
Monument, or who have been in any way connected 
with this Association during the half-century which it 
covers, can have been omitted from so comprehensive a 
volume. It is itself a monument of sina:ular diliirence 
and devotion. 

A graduate of Harvard University in 1830, a member 



ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT C. WINTIIROP. 15 

of our State Legislature, a Mayor of the City of Charles- 
town before its annexation to Boston, a faithful Judge ot 
the Municipal Court to the end of his life, associated 
prominently of late with the old First Church of Boston, 
and always a public-spirited and patriotic citizen of his 
Commonwealth and Country, in peace and in war, — 
Judge Warren has left an enduring record in many 
conspicuous spheres of official service, as well as in the 
annals of this Association. 

I leave it to you, Gentlemen, to originate any action 
in regard to these bereavements which may be custo- 
mary or ajDpropriate, and I turn for a moment, before 
concluding these somewhat desultory remarks, from the 
dead to the living. I alluded, at the outset, to the fact 
that sixty years have now passed away since this Asso- 
ciation was incorporated. Of the original Board of 
Directors in 1823, not one is now living. I doubt if 
there are manv oriiJ-inal members of the Association left, 
though there are some of us here present, who, as boys 
or as young men, witnessed the laying of the corner- 
stone of the Monument in 1825, and heard parts, if 
not the whole, of Webster's immortal oration. But I 
cannot forget that first, in the order of seniority, on our 
roll of living Directors, and at the head of our Vice- 
Presidents, stands the name of a venerable printer, book- 
seller, and publisher, of our city, the imprint of whose 
firm — Crocker & Brewster — has been the guaranty 
of a good book for more years than I can count, who 
has been always held, and is still held, in the highest 
regard and respect by our whole community, and who, 
having been elected a Director in 1833, has this day. 



16 ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 

in the eighty-seventh year of his age, completed a half- 
century of faithful service. I call upon 3^011 all to rise 
and nnite with me in offering our thanks and congratu- 
lations to our valued associate and excellent fellow- 
citizen and friend, Uriel Crocker, and in expressing 
the earnest hope that he may long be spared in health 
and strength, not only to this Association, but to the 
community in which he has been so conspicuous an 
example of that industry, integrity, public spirit, and 
patriotism which have characterized and distinguished 
the mechanics of Boston from the days of their illus- 
trious leader, Paul Revere. 

And now, Gentlemen, having finished these sincere 
though imperfect tributes to the living and the dead, it 
only remains for me to call upon my friend, the Hon. 
Frederic W. Lincoln, another of our Vice-Presidents, 
who has most kindly and efficiently conducted the 
affairs of the Standing Committee for several years 
past, to make report of their proceedings and doings 
since our last Annual Meeting. 



,h^^Ri 



'fiRy 



Opr 



r^'^G/?/ 



'fss 



011 



800 



965 y/^ 



#r' 



